Superpower dreams!

A great news had hit the headlines in the recent days: “India 12th wealthiest nation in 2005, says World Bank.” PTI had published this on Saturday, July 08, 2006. According to this news India has emerged as the 12th wealthiest nation in the world with its GDP touching 785.47 billion dollars or Rs. 35,34,615 crore in 2005, calculated by the World Bank. US was the wealthiest nation with GDP of 12.46 trillion dollars, according to a list of 15 wealthiest countries prepared by the World Bank in terms of their gross domestic product. While India was way down compared to China, positioned fourth with 2.23 trillion dollars of GDP, it was wealthier than Mexico, Russia and Australia. The United States was followed by Japan with 4.51 trillion dollars and Germany 2.78 trillion dollars. Britain, France and Italy occupied fifth, sixth and seventh ranks. Next came Spain, Canada, Brazil and South Korea. There was no African country among the 15 richest nations, while India was the only south Asian country in the list.
There is jubilation among the economist, investors, ruling elites and the upper strata. Many other surprises popped up simultaneously. With 28 states and 7 Union territories, having 16% of the world population and with a super power status, the Indian leaders nurture the superpower dreams.
59 years in the life of a nation is probably not very long, but in the life of all individuals in India it is certainly long. But finally, what is a nation after all if not the sum total of the growth of its citizens. The per capita income add up to GNP and thus if the individual has progressed, so has the nation or vice versa.
Looking back over the chequered path that our shifting developmental paradigm has traversed, one can be overwhelmed with the whole lot of bungled opportunities, shoddy growth and the continued multifarious socio-economic problems that the present generation of Indians have inherited. Not that we have not progressed, we have progressed long. But the regional and social imbalances of immense magnitude persist. The dictum “India is not poor, but Indians are poor” remained stuck.
We had inherited an India which was bereft of most developmental resources. Except some railway lines and roads and other infrastructure mainly to supply raw materials to England and to maintain the administrative apparatus in support of colonial interest were left belvind
According to government sources, some 300 million lived either below the poverty line No doubt 59 years down the line the conditions have changed in many ways. But the size of the population below the poverty line has increased in absolute terms. In 1947, it was 90% at 300 million, today it is around 35% at over 350 million of 1000 million population of the country, a reflection of our failure at redistributive justice.
If the absolute number of the poor in India has not reduced over the last 59 years, there must be profound reasons. Some clue can be had from China and other far eastern countries.
Unlike our politicians and their elite babus, people at the helm in these countries showed real concern for the fundamentals of human well being. Quietly they went about attending to primary health care, basic education and providing for gainful employment to all their people. Yes, even after 59 years we still have lot to learn from these countries. These countless have left India far behind in Human Development Index (HDI). Our meaning system simply didn’t work and failed to deliver. Could it be, as Rajeev Gandhi had said, ‘only 15 paise of the rupee reached the people and the 85 paise go lost in transit’. The classic example of our granaries being full and people dying of starvation is a sad commentary on our monumental failure to measure upto even minimum expectation in a democratic setup.
It is ironical that despite manifold increase in the physical infrastructure for primary education almost 40% of the population is illiterate. In spite of high enrolment in government schools, at any given time, some 50% of primary school children are believed to be out of school. However, in recent days, due to the programmes like Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and Mid-Day meal scheme the dropout rate has sharply declined in some stales.
After nine Five year Plans over 250 million are without safe drinking water. Over 600 million lack basic sanitation facility. Incidentally providing sanitation facility is not one of the priorities of all governments whether state or federal. Housing is another problem, successive governments have failed to address. However since last 5 years there has been a spurt in the housing sector, although a decent house for the below the poverty line (BPL) population is still a distant dream.
In India, the prevailing socio economic system, compounded by the economic liberalisation, continues to generate poverty. The political structure is either unconcerned or helpless about it. The civil servants, who are really powerful and self serving, excel in a status, as was in colonial era, loaded against the people. They continue to be masters in disguise with the politicians often eating out of their hands.
The failure of the social policy and planning in respect of human development has resulted in India’s inability to stabilise the already high population, which was mainly due to the fear among poor people of high mortality and low individual earning capacity, where every additional hand shall add in some money to the family. This increase in number only increases the low quality of population and that is a matter of concern.
The present stage of economic administration in India represents an ambiguous social philosophy which weeps for the poor but sides with the rich. Interest of the working class is sidelined in the name of economic competitiveness, as we have witnessed these days with protest against reservation policy.
Corruption is another malaise that has grown to endemic proportion as years passed by. As a social evil corruption has got a powerful entry into our delivery system. We have been bracketed among the most corrupt nations of the world by the Transparency International. This steep level of corruption had made Rajiv Gandhi to make that famous statement of 15 paise a rupee of the development money reaching the people. India Corruption Study 2005 has indicated the amount of sleaze that has permeated into the civil society.
According to the study biggest beneficiaries of corruption are schools, the schools of haves, with Rs. 4137 crores going its way, followed by Police Rs: 3899 crores, LandAdministration Rs. 3126 crores. According to Lokayukta of Karnataka Justice Venkatachala, the sub registrars’ office -the Land Registrars -across the state is the most corrupt. Study also revealed that Judiciary was also one of bigger beneficiaries of bribes with Rs. 2630 crores, so was the electricity department with Rs. 2169 crores. Thus it is very clear that corruption has really affected our developmental efforts.
Revenue and financial administration of the country is another of the shoddy dimension of our governance. Close to 100,000 crores are provided and written off as non performing assets of public sector banks, and mostly owed by private sector enterprises, where again sleaze plays its roll, so also some of the badly managed, sinking public sector units, but kept alive for political reasons. Then you have departments of income tax, excise, and other revenue departments of the state where thousands of crores are remaining to be collected, but no action initiated for reasons other than administrative and economic.
India, 12th wealthiest nation in the world. Is that true? Are we really getting richer? For us, India still lives in its villages and people still have little access to its vast land and water, fruits of the soil and seas, jobs in thriving factories and the improving quality of life. It is with this background the World Bank report has to be analysed. For the outsiders, India is a very attractive market. According to Huw Jenkins, Chairman & CEO, UBS Investments Banking, India is extremely bullish. It has a good merger and acquisition business and also a good equities business. But for the devoted Indians it is not a market. It is a soil where after years of toil our elders brought us meaning, peace and freedom.
Yet, India’s foreign policy and security establishment is backed by a fawning media. Meanwhile, Indian nuclear scientists and engineers have moved from sulking over the deal to condemning it outright.
Here lies a terrible irony. Just as India radically reshapes its relations with the world, it is deeply divided, public opinion is irrevocably split, even elite views are polarised. We have never before seen such a chasm on a foreign policy issue neither over non-alignment in the 1950s, nor over the friendship treaty with the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the 1970s. This should make the deal’s zealous advocates pause and think.
After all, the agreement is an integral part of the global system of alliances that Washington is building in its effort to dominate the world by preventing the emergence of a rival power or an alliance of states that could challenge it in the future. There is a paradigm shift in India’s foreign and security policy posture with the March 2 agreement between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush.
In some ways, U.S. plans for India, declared overtly through its March 2005 offer to help India become “a major world power in the 21st century”, and other far reaching initiatives, are comparable to Washington’s strategy of the early 1970s to wean China away from the USSR. This, as well as the content of the deal, with its negative implications for India’s sovereignty and for the cause of world peace and global nuclear disarmament, furnishes a strong, logical, and rational ground for opposing it. But that is not where its most vocal Indian opponents come from.
The bulk of them, former and serving officials of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), and a few media commentators lack a political perspective critical of the U.S. and its global role, which on balance is negative. Some have a history of taking pro-U.S. positions. They are guided by a narrow, militaristic and chauvinistic idea of the national interest and an absolute concept of sovereignty, which must be rethought in respect of weapons of mass destruction or acts that can constitute crimes against humanity. They do not ground their criticism of the deal either in India’s declared “minimum credible nuclear deterrent” doctrine, or in principles of transparency and accountability, leave alone universal values such as human security and peace which actually makes us a super power.